Salary, dismissal claims ease in 2021; MOM rolls back 2 Covid-linked notification rules
Sharon See
THE overall incidence of employment claims and appeals fell in 2021, compared to the year before, alongside Singapore’s economic recovery from Covid-19, according to the Employment Standards Report 2021 released on Monday (Jul 18).
The overall number of employment claims and appeals lodged with the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) fell from 2.59 per 1,000 employees in 2020 to 1.73 in 2021.
Commenting on the findings, TADM general manager Kandhavel Periyasamy said: “This is mainly because we are coming out of a very challenging Covid-19 year and the economy is improving, and this is quite consistent when we say that when businesses are doing well, employers by and large are responsible.”
In all, there were 5,882 employment claims and appeals taken to MOM and TADM in 2021, compared with 8,697 in the previous year.
This year, 64 per cent of the claims were filed by local employees, compared with 59 per cent in 2020.
Salary claims made up 82 per cent at 4,848, while close to 16 per cent were dismissal claims.
The incidence of salary claims fell to 1.43 per 1,000 employees in 2021, from 2.15 in the previous year, with the incidence higher among foreign employees.
Among local employees, the drop in salary claims was partly due to an improvement in economic growth within the services sector, including accommodation and food services activities as well as wholesale and retail trade.
For foreign employees, there was a sharp decline in salary claims in the construction sector, which the report attributed to MOM’s “proactive interventions to tackle non-payment of salaries upstream over the last 2 years”.
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On the whole, 84 per cent of salary claims were resolved at TADM, with the remaining 16 per cent referred to the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) for adjudication — a similar proportion to that in 2020.
Over 9 in 10 claims were concluded at TADM within 2 months, compared with 76 per cent in 2020, due to the drop in the number of claims lodged last year, the report said.
The total recovered sum to employees in 2021 was S$8.6 million, down from S$15 million in the previous year.
The Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) said in a Facebook post that the tripartite approach to resolve employment disputes through mediation has continued to result in most cases being settled amicably and expeditiously.
As for wrongful dismissal claims, the overall incidence fell to 0.27 claims per 1,000 last year, compared with 0.39 in 2020. However, the incidence was higher for local employees, compared with foreign ones.
While 62 per cent of these claims were resolved at TADM, the rest were referred to ECT for adjudication.
SNEF noted that 74 per cent of wrongful dismissal claims were generally due to miscommunication.
“SNEF strongly encourages employers to implement responsible employment practices and grievance handling procedures to prevent and resolve employees’ grievances in the workplace respectively,” it said.
Meanwhile, MOM said it will roll back 2 temporary measures that were introduced to deal with disruptions that businesses faced from Covid-19.
Employers with more than 10 employees were required from March 2020 to notify MOM if they implement cost-saving measures that affected employees’ monthly salaries, but this will not be a requirement anymore from Aug 1.
Similarly, an advisory on retrenchment benefit payable to retrenched employees as a result of business difficulties due to Covid-19 introduced in May 2020 will also be removed.
This comes as the number of employers submitting new cost-saving notifications fell to a monthly average of 8 in the first quarter of this year, from the peak of 1,713 employers in April 2020.
Likewise, the number of cases of employees seeking assistance on retrenchment benefits has since fallen to a monthly average of 8 cases in Q1, down from its peak of 198 cases in August 2020.
Periyasamy from TADM said those measures were necessary during Covid-19 but are no longer so now that the economy is picking up and businesses are getting back to normal.
The tripartite advisories on managing excess manpower and responsible retrenchment continue to apply.
In a Facebook post, NTUC assistant secretary-general Patrick Tay said: “When managing excess manpower measures are being implemented, (it is) crucial for early notification to unions and timely notification to MOM and workers so that the relevant help can be rendered to affected members and workers.”
Separately, also in a Facebook post, Senior Minister of State Koh Poh Koon lauded “the vast majority of employers” who treated their employees responsibly as well as employees who made sacrifices to help businesses survive, despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
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